A Meeting of Minds
by ScarletRaven21
Summary: Two-shot. A closer inspection of Larry's visit with Alex in 1x13 and a look into both perspectives. Each chapter is one pov.
1. Chapter 1

A Meeting of Minds

 **Summary:** A two shot featuring a closer look at Larry's visit with Alex Season 1 as told from each of their perspectives.

 **Warnings:** Rated M for language

 **Disclaimer:** I wish.

 **A/N:** For anyone still reading Mistakes, I promise an update is forthcoming. The muse is nothing if not persistent and more than a little spastic. I find it's usually best just to humor her.

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Chapter 1: Larry

I thought I came prepared for this meeting. Armed with a plan and a promise commemorating my victory, I thought I knew what to expect from the felonious Alex Vause.

After everything I had heard about her—from Polly with her unabashed loathing, Piper's quietly apologetic explanations—I had somehow conjured up the image of a black widow spinning with long dexterous fingers a web of lies and manipulations, weaving my Piper into her trap with little more compassion than she'd show an errant fly.

I suppose I expected Arachne to take the form of my feminine rival—small and dark like the spider I had come to think of her, like her hidden, but predatory presence in our lives. In _my_ life with Piper. I'd find her lurking in a secret corner plotting her subversive games, but, once confronted, easily quashed.

She was simply a schoolyard bully too used to getting her way. Surely, she'd back down from a real challenge. I was confident I had the trump card in my pocket—it's golden shine hidden safe and secure in the leather folds of my wallet. This meeting was a forgone conclusion.

Turns out, I couldn't have been more wrong.

It's not until I see her there in the doorway, that I realize how incongruous that image is with what I know of her. "Dark" is about the only similarity they share, but her black hair is where it ends.

Tall and luminescently pale, she seems to command the very air, drawing every breath and half-spoken word into the vortex of her bespectacled eyes, every eye in its turn drawn just as irresistibly into the gravitational pull.

Alex Vause is no insect; she is a Titan.

She pauses only briefly in the entrance before wing-tipped eyes catch mine through thick black frames and a room full of strangers. She recognizes me as easily as I had her, though I doubt my presence has quite the same impact.

Suddenly feeling the weight of that difference, I surge to my feet as she approaches, but felt dwarfed all the same. She has no more than a couple inches on me, but the distance feels like miles which only grew as it closed.

"Alex?" I verify, as though the answer isn't obvious.

She seems remarkably unimpressed by my wit. "Yeah?" she says, a single brow arching over the rim of her glasses as she stares me down.

I have never felt so small as I do beneath that grey-green gaze—like David armed only with a sling-shot. Her stare is hard and penetrating even through her lenses; they drive into me, plunging deep, taunting— _daring_ me to speak.

The words leave my throat before I could even form the thought to hold them back. "Wow. You're tall."

Her face twists with contemptuous incredulity, her full pink lips twisting at the corner. "I've been told," she scoffs. She takes her seat with no further reaction than this, but the scornful laughter in those eyes is almost triumphant, as though it had been their intention all along to rip from me the evidence of my own inferiority.

A flush of white hot shame turns quickly to anger as she regards me with that condescending gaze, but I can hardly stand to meet those eyes. The intensity of them is blinding, impossible to meet and—though I hated to admit it even to myself—as impossible to ignore as her beauty.

She wears that beauty like an impenetrable armor and wields it like her greatest weapon with the skill and confidence of an undisputed champion. With an arched brow and a smirking lip she commands the air in a magnetic attraction of particles both concrete and psychological that brooks no argument, allows no deviance. It is more than a little intimidating, and I have no idea how to react.

I see it suddenly clear as day. She is a vacuum—a black hole, sucking everything into herself with little more than a glance in your direction. And if she can have this sort of effect on _me_ , I can only imagine the force of that magnetism when she turns it on Piper. She'd be powerless to resist.

The image evokes another still more disturbing and a vision of hazy blonde and black, of green and blue, hands and lips and effortless, frenzied betrayal sends a jarring mix of emotion through my suddenly heated skin.

"Um," I start, my thumbs fidgeting as I try unsuccessfully to meet that pitiless gaze and, again, my thoughts come unbidden to my tongue under the assault of her silent challenge. "I'm sorry, this is uh…" My eyes skitter away from it, landing again on the cold laminate beneath my hands. I can't help the disbelieving huff or irritation at my own cowardice and her arrogance.

This last gives me the push I need to continue. "I had so many things planned to say to you and now I…I'm just picturing you uh—"

"Got you all flustered?" she taunts, a knowing smirk on her lips. She seemed singularly unbothered by any of this, entirely at ease strolling through the wreckage she's left in her wake.

"You got me pissed off!" I snap, finally angry enough to forget my discomfort as I glare hatefully into those cool green eyes.

Fuck her and her power plays, for reeling Piper in and screwing her over _again_. For ruining everything we had built together these past few years, for throwing a grenade into the middle of our future plans—our dreams. For stealing Piper's happiness out of some malicious whim, some sociopathic desire to win her back just to prove she could.

And, more even than any of that, _fuck her_ for not caring.

"How many times do you think you can come around and fuck up Piper's life, huh?" I sneer, the heat of my sudden anger fueling the stare down. "I—I don't know what kind of psychic _black void_ your little game with her fills, but you need to end it _now_ ," I warn with force. "And stay away from her."

I glare harshly into her eyes, awaiting her reaction. Nothing. Not even a blink at my threatening tone. If anything, she looks amused. Anger gives way to confusion.

"Not a problem," she answers, the shadow of a smirk in her eyes. "She's all yours, champ. We done here?"

She throws the last at me like the final impossible challenge; delivered with no expectation of a response. The gauntlet hits the dirt and she turns her back.

My hands reach as though to halt her exit and my voice echo the gesture. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on," I exclaim, and, surprisingly, she listens.

She levers herself back into the folding chair with a huff of irritation. Her impatience is obvious, but it is the furthest thing from my mind.

"Suddenly she's 'all mine'?" I question incredulously, "when you have been…working her over since she got here?"

That, at last, prompts a reaction, but it isn't the one I expected. "'Working her over'?" she repeats, disbelief and anger warring for dominance in those stormy eyes. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

My brows wrinkle in confusion at her tone, but I remain silent.

"She came to _me_ , dragged _me_ into that chapel, and fucked _me_." Every word is punctuated with a pointed finger, stabbing the hard plastic table and my heart in one.

She watches me closely, no doubt seeing every distressed thought flicker across my slackened face. It brings a smug smile to her lips and a sadistic glint to her eyes.

"Surprised me too," she admits. "She never used to be the aggressor. I guess it was a new color she was trying on. Or maybe she was bored. Eh, who knows?" She shrugs audibly, making no effort to hide her delight at my pain as the horror of this revelation pierces the veil of my indignation.

I refuse to reveal to her how deep her words have cut me; I am unwilling to give her that satisfaction. Instead, I hold my anger like a shield between us, between her words and my own thoughts, and all I can see there is the insult of the image. That she would choose to break her vow to me in such a place, in such a way. With _this_ woman of all people.

"You fucked in a chapel?" I snap, allowing only that anger to make it through the haze of betrayal and hurt at this news.

"It's prison. There aren't a whole lot of options," she taunts, still smirking.

Still, something flashes in those hard eyes. It's there and gone too quickly to identify, and if I hadn't been watching so closely I would never have seen it. I can't know what it means, but it tells me something. She's hurt too. My own gaze sticks fast to the table-top at the sight of it.

"But I'm done," she spits as grey-green eyes ice over in the wake of buried pain, the frost in them hard and impenetrable. "Can't survive another spin on her merry-go-round, and clearly you're still into it so…enjoy the ride."

I glance at her quickly, desperately clutching at the slippery folds of my rage with shaking fingers. "Fuck you!" I hiss, but the insult sounds pathetic even to my ears. I am losing ground quickly beneath the chill of that glare. "It's not a ride. We're getting married."

"Great," she smiles, but her eyes are still cold. "So why are you here?"

"I wanted to meet you," I whisper, suddenly mortified by the confession and my own naiveté. I can no longer bear to meet her eyes.

She leans toward me anyway, refusing to permit my retreat. She looks almost sorry for me. "Larry, my heart is with you," she tells me, green eyes consuming brown. "She's hot. She's read everything. We both know what she's like in bed," the wistful movement of her gaze releases me briefly and my eyes return to my hands, memories swimming with words like passionate, wild, curious and Piper's blazing eyes. They hold new meaning now.

The thought sends a jolt of heat through my body that is not entirely painful, and I hate myself a little more for the reaction.

They were words I had come to equate with loving Piper, ones that I know I will see matched if not magnified in that grey-green stare should I find the courage to meet it.

I want to sigh with relief at the narrow escape as her eyes drift to the ceiling on the crest of that sigh, stay huddled and blind to that swirling vortex, but she is having none of it. She seizes them again with a single movement.

"But she is _fucked up_ " she concludes, and the conviction in the statement tears the remaining shreds of denial from my weakening grasp. "I know it…and you do too. Or else you wouldn't be here warning me to stay away. I'm not your problem."

Alex Vause watches me a moment longer, her pitiless eyes staring me down as I crumble beneath this final killing blow, before she rises again to her feet, towering above my defeated and bleeding form, and walks away.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Alex

I really fucking hate this room. Maybe it's the formulaic spread of fake wooden tables and foldable chairs, the faintly musty aroma of mold and neglect, or the bitter salty tang of tears and resentment, but this room has never failed to ignite a roaring fire of desperation and the barest edge of panic. It sets my teeth on edge and my heart to pacing like a feral animal in a tiny cage. Claustrophobia sets in fierce and unyielding every time.

It's not unlike being locked in that fucking dryer, surrounded on all sides by cold, hard walls and compassionless eyes, but this time it's the illusion of freedom that ensnares you.

Though, I hardly need prison for that.

This room is the final destination on the road to dehumanization with its comforting delusion and the distracted visitation of estranged and indifferent "loved ones". To the disillusioned, it is a bureaucratic trap for the simple and a harsh blow to the false reality of "the outside".

Somehow, strip search notwithstanding, the jarring reminder that life continues on beyond these walls as you stand forgotten within them makes the return to captivity all the more oppressive. It reminds you that you never really left at all.

And yet, it was a trap that even I could not resist. Despite the visitor in question, I tell myself I have only agreed to this meeting out of curiosity, but I'm not one to bullshit myself. That's more Piper's shtick anyway.

No, if I'm being honest, I know it's jealousy that has drawn me to that table. Not jealousy of _him_ , of course, but of the life he represents that she chose over me. I came in here expecting a squirrely, yuppy, cardboard cut-out of suburban America, and, let me tell you, he doesn't disappoint.

A wave of unadulterated loathing washes over me at the sight. For him with his simple life, easy smile, Piper's fickle heart and treacherous libido, but most of all for myself for having fallen prey to it.

I note his discomfort, his inability to meet my eyes and I feel cruel satisfaction bring a smile to my face. He came to me the supposed victor, yet somehow I feel superior. It is a rush of power that I welcome—a familiar sort of control that I have sorely missed. This is natural. This is effortless. It's what I was made for.

He jumps to his feet as I close the distance between us, looking up at me with an expression bordering on awe. I can practically see as the faceless entity takes physical form in front of him. The surrealism of this meeting is not lost on me, I'm just better at hiding it.

"Alex?" he asks aloud, and I barely resist the urge to laugh in his face.

Obviously. See anyone else?

"Yeah?" I say, though it sounds more an accusation than an answer even to my ears.

He looks like he wants to say something as his eyes rake over my face, committing it to the name much as I had.

"You're…" he starts, seemingly searching for witty rejoinder, and settles on "…tall."

Seriously? Idiot.

I feel my eyebrows wrinkle incredulously at the comment. He's not doing much to redeem himself here, is he? "I've been told," I retort.

I look away briefly, watching my own hand as it curls about the cold metal chair back and braces my movement as I sit, cool and confident as my back hits metal. My eyebrow twitches of its own accord as I catch his eyes again.

"I, uh…" he stutters, eyes flickering nervously from mine. I feel a familiar confidence settle in my shoulders, as I relax into his obvious discomfort. This, at least, feels right. "I'm sorry. I had so many things planned to say to you and now…I just keep picturing you, uh—"

The thought of that, what he must be "picturing", nearly brings a smug grin to my face. He is making this _so_ easy. He practically delivers control to me on a silver platter. It's not an unfamiliar thing, but I'll admit that I am mildly surprised. I expected better from Piper's _choice_ than this blubbering moron before me. What happened to "Larry, the writer; Larry, the fiancé; Larry, the paper mache white collar dream"?

It's then I see it. He's so utterly clueless, so fortunately naïve, that it's decidedly pathetic. He's such an outdated cliché: the young lord declaring himself a poet while he scribbles idyllic prose from the inside of a plastic bubble.

"Got you all flustered?" I taunt.

"You got me pissed off! How many times do you think you can come around and fuck up Piper's life, huh? I don't know what kind of psychic….black void…you're little game with her fills, but you need to end it. Now. And stay away from her."

This is not even worth my time. Not even for curiosity's sake. This boy doesn't know the first thing about life, and he doesn't know the first thing about her. He thinks he understands Piper because they shopped at whole foods on the weekends and failed the master cleanse together, because he's met Carol and Bill and Holly approves, but he only knows the façade.

The Piper he knows is only the diamond hard veneer of "refined" bullshit she hides behind when reality cuts a little to close. When her own choices (though heaven forbid she own up to them) threaten that Little Miss Perfect image of hers. But she's lying to him, she's lying to her friends, and she's lying to herself. She isn't running _to_ him anymore than she's running _from_ me. Piper the WASPy debutante flees in mindless panic from Piper the adventurer, from the _real_ Piper that only I have ever gotten to know, and I am so fucking tired of chasing her.

"Not a problem. She's all yours champ," I state emphatically, palms pressed flat to the table as I prepare to rise from my seat. "We done here?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on," he calls as I make as though to leave. I sigh internally, but reluctantly return to my chair and meeting again with the consternation of those brown eyes. "Suddenly she's 'all mine'?" he repeats disbelievingly. "When you have been working her over since she got here?"

I'm not sure what possesses me to do it exactly. Maybe I just want to see his face when he realizes his poor innocent Piper was no more substantial than a toddler's imaginary friend—a desperate and immature dream concocted by a woman afraid of her own shadow, yet utterly incapable of letting it go.

"Working her over? Are you fucking kidding me?" I laugh, though there is no humor in it. "She came to _me_ , dragged _me_ into that chapel, and fucked _me_.

I watch as reluctant understanding and horror fills his dark eyes, but it is quickly replaced by denial. He's stubborn, I'll give him that. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

"Surprised me too. She never used to be the aggressor. Guess it was a new color she was trying on. Or maybe she was bored. Eh, who knows?"

This time the absolute shock mixed with betrayal and revulsion in his eyes brings a genuine smile to my face, albeit an entirely sadistic one. There is something so satisfying about the symmetry of this moment. It seems only fair really.

"You fucked in a chapel?" he asks, eyes still skittishly avoiding the glee in mine.

"It's prison. There aren't a whole lot of options," I taunt, but my amusement is short-lived as I continue seriously, my initial anger returning with a vengeance. "But, I'm done. Can't survive another spin on her merry-go-round, and clearly you're still into it so…enjoy the ride."

"Fuck you," he snaps immediately, but it only confirms my theory. Somewhere deep inside that cheap plastic shell of delusion, he knows I'm right. I know how he feels, really, but only one of us really understands what it _means_.

Some days I think it would be better if she didn't love me. I know it would be if I didn't love her. But some days I think that if I could just _know_ that she was running from me because she didn't care rather than despite it—that she wasn't choosing cowardice over love—that maybe I could let her go.

"It's not a ride. We're getting married," he finishes, but my mind is elsewhere at the moment.

"Great," I say, keeping my smile pleasant and unaffected despite the sneer that pulls at my lips.

"So why are you here?" I challenge. Though of course I know the answer, I can't resist the angry, taunting smirk that twists my mouth through the hardened edge of my contempt—my frustration at her thoughtless, cowardly cruelty.

Because she can't possibly love him. Not really. Because, if she feels even a fraction of this excruciating, irresistible pull that I do every time she enters a room (hell, every time she crosses my mind), she can't possibly have anything left to give to him. And the thing is, I know she does. I saw it in her eyes every day for two years until the day she left me—the same thing I saw every day in the mirror for the last ten. Even hidden behind too bright, sunken eyes and pale, shaking hands, I saw it— _felt_ it—and even now I catch its echo in hers.

It's not possible to feel this twice, and it _shouldn't_ be possible to ignore it. Not unless your name is Piper Chapman, apparently. She stands against the whirlwind and fights for stillness, for escape, no matter how futile the exercise. No matter the force of the gale, the ripping frenzy of the wind, she somehow stands tall. Instead, I'm the one being torn apart.

"I wanted to meet you," he whispers, ashamed by the confession, and I see the bewildered betrayal in his eyes.

They remind me a bit of Piper's when she throws that cute little sad face at you, pleading for the comforting denial to shift the heavy weight of blame and responsibility from her narcissistic shoulders. Though unlike the mesmerizing and manipulative blue I was accustomed to, these were dark brown and full of wounded disbelief like those of a kicked puppy. It makes me vicious.

"Larry, my heart is with you. She's hot. She's read everything. We both know what she's like in bed." The memory of hungry mouths and hot, desperate fingers filled my nights for eight years, and that was when I thought her gone forever.

My eyes bore sharply into his as I deliver a truth I have known for eight years. A truth I should never have forgotten. "But she is _fucked up_ ," I say, and I've never meant anything more. "I know it, and you do too or else you wouldn't be here warning me to stay away. I'm not your problem."

In the next moment, I am striding from the room, prison boots slapping on linoleum tile, as I remember the look in her eyes when she told me her choice in that library. When she said, "I pick him" like it was the most natural thing in the world, like I had never been more than a warm body and a comforting smile to her all the times she told me she loved me. Those words left me cold.

Still, knowing now the truth of it, I doubt my will against her the next time she comes to me with wet, sapphire eyes and whispered promises of love and forever. I don't know if I'm that strong. We seem doomed to an eternal cycle of heartbreak and a devastating kind of love neither of us can ever hope to escape.

One thing I do know though, that boy won't be the one to end the it.


End file.
